


Elemancy

by beforethequeen



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: M/M, Magical Boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 23:17:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12851631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beforethequeen/pseuds/beforethequeen
Summary: GladNoct Week Day Two: Magic use.“Legend says once upon a time elemancy could be taught. The Kingsglaive can borrow the power of the Crystal to warp.”Gladio frowns as he words leave Noctis’ mouth. This is dangerous. “Don’t get any ideas.”“Too late.”





	Elemancy

The very first time sparks gathered in the palm of Noctis’ hand, Gladio reels back in fear, his stomach dropping out. He had been told many times through his life that his prince was imbued in magic, saw the Glaives warp at will, even observed Noctis during his warp training—a blur of blue light following his lithe form. But standing now in the middle of the training room, Gladio sees him use his elemancy for the first time, clumsy and unpracticed and beautiful.

“Wanna see something?” Noctis asks, his voice quiet with the weight of a secret.

Gladio recaps his water bottle and nods.

Noctis holds a hand out, palm upturned to the crisscross of the ceiling. Gladio can see he is shaking, his blue eyes focused on the core of his hand. Gladio swallows, uncertain of what to expect. Noctis looks frustrated.

“Noct, what?” He asks, reaching out to touch his waiting hand when a flash of purple white light cracks. Gladio jumps back with the instinctual fear of being burned. When he looks at Noctis’ face, he finds him smirking, eyes wide and mischievous.

“Is that your magic?”

“Sure is,” Noctis says, and Gladio can detect a tremor of fear in him.

Gladio crosses his arms over his chest, tilts his head. “Do you just, like, store that thunder in you?”

Noctis laugh, breathy. “A little? I gotta gather it, then I can portion what I want and bottle it. But that was… not bottled.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Nah.” But Gladio watches him flex his hand to loosen up the muscles.

“How long you been working on that?”

“The Grand Maester has been teaching me. It took a while, but I’m getting it.” Noctis scans the room and, seemingly finding what he was looking for, turns back to Gladio with an excited little smile. “Watch.”

Noctis stretches a pale arm out toward the wall beside them, his wrist bent up and fingers splayed in the air. Gladio follows the line of his pale skin in the dim early evening training room light to the ornamental torch on the wall, where a small controlled fire blazes. Noctis closes his eyes and furrows his brow, his whole body slowly relaxing from concentrated tension, his forehead and face smoothing out and his soft pink lips falling open, just slightly.

Gladio finds his own body leaning forward, drawn toward him, and he jumps only slightly when the flame flickers with an unseen wind and begins to materialize and furl in the center of Noctis outstretched palm.

Noctis twists his wrist and the flame seems to engulf his hand, but there is no fear, no pain readable in his prince’s face.

“ _Astrals_ , Noct,” Gladio breathes.

A small smirk twists his lips, and Noctis pulls his hand from the flame, clenching his fist and vanishing the fire.

Gladio smirks back at him. “That’s incredible.”

Noctis preens quietly, his grin large and unable to be concealed, even though the teenager tips his chin down to hide it.

-

The Maesters taught Gladio of the ways of the Crystal, of the line of Lucis, in his after-school hours. Gladio drank the words like fine wine, slow yet eager to soak in the wealth of ancient magical knowledge. He loved the stories of old kings, royals setting out with small militaries at their side to climb the mountain and slay the griffon in her lair. He dreamed of his own adventures someday, for life instead the walls of Insomnia were routine and boring.

On Gladio’s wall are snap photographs his father took of Eos outside the wall—a lush green concave field with a blue lake in the middle, the criss-cross the rocky byways across the sky, the meteorite, a lighthouse on a cliff, a vast desert with sandy mountains reaching toward the Astrals Astrals—Gladio cherished them, stared at them when he found himself longing for adventure. He compared them to the stories his father told him after he’d had a drink or two of a road trip across the country, of giant beasts and learning the true meaning of duty. Clarus always sounded wistful when he said it. Gladio wonders what he found out there in the wilderness.

When Noctis held out his hand in the middle of the training room, the two of them alone on the mat and staring at each other, Gladio retreated to his room that night with a takeaway burger and poured over his old books on the Crystal, on the line of Lucis’ ability to hold fire in their hands.

His drive for knowledge, the memory of Noctis smirking at him with a hand ablaze in benign flames, kept Gladio awake through the night, his eyes tracking line by line through heavy texts on magic. There is no explanation for why, or how the power came to be, just that it is, that a king a thousand years ago pulled thunder from a crack in the earth and Lucis has been honing the skill ever since.

When Gladiolus’ bedroom began to light in a low blue, indicating the sun’s soon emergence, He closed the books and crawled into bed. Hands behind his hand, Gladio stared at the ceiling. He thought of training the next day, of how he would work even harder to strengthen himself to match his prince, who can gather thunder in his hands unscathed.

Despite the late hour, sleep does not find him. His eyes trace the edges of the photographs tacked to his wall before he reaches for them, holds an image of a field surrounded by trees, a beast prowling in the lake at the center of it. He imagines running through the grass, following his prince whose hands are swarming in a dangerous light. He falls asleep holding the photo.

-

Sometimes Gladio asks Noctis about the flame, but they don’t really talk about it, it is not a part of the physical training the two of them do together. Gladio and Noctis are all hand-to-hand and the clashing of swords. Magic has no places except when Noctis cheekily warps away from him and Gladio finds him hanging from the ceiling with a big grin on his face. Gladio likes to catch him when Noctis drops.

At the end of practice, as Gladio sets Noctis down on his feet from the bridal style way he bore his weight, Noctis’ eyes shyly cut over to the torches. Gladio, eager for something like this, notices immediately.

“How’s your elemancy training?”

Noct shrugs. “It’s easy. I can gather the elements without a problem, but some of the advanced mixing and bottling is confusing.”

“You can hold the elements?”

Noctis nods. “Fire, thunder, ice. I can store a small amount of them each. Grand Maester says I should be able to do at least twice of what I can, but I don’t know. It’s not working. I’ve got the first part down.”

“Show me,” Gladio asks before he can think better of it.

Noctis flicks a hand out toward the flame on the other side of the room and the fire gathers around his hand. He barely shows his concentration. He is watching for Gladio’s reaction.

“Legend says once upon a time this could be taught. The Kingsglaive can borrow the power of the Crystal to warp.”

Gladio frowns as he words leave Noctis’ mouth. This is dangerous.

“Don’t get any ideas.”

“Too late.”

Gladio runs a hand through his hair. “You’re dangerous, kid.”

“I’m _magical_ , let me share it with you.”

Noctis walks to the torch and Gladio follows without hesitation, right at his side as he is meant to be. The stop some short paces away and Noctis moves Gladio as he wants him, an arm out toward the torch, his fingers splayed out and palm undefended. Noctis walks up behind Gladio and his breath catches, feeling the wind move around him, feeling Noctis’ little hand grips his wrist, his chest close to Gladio’s back and his breath washing over Gladio’s bicep.

“Close your eyes,” Noctis instructs. “Concentrate on the flame.”

It’s almost funny to be taught by him instead of the other way around. Gladio so rarely hears Noctis’ serious voice, and has certainly never heard him giving careful instructions. Gladio finds he likes being his prince’s student, his breath caught.

“Let it wash over you. The first time, I felt a warmth crawling up my chest before the fire came to me. Search for the warmth, keep your hand still.”

Gladio’s entire body is statute stiff, eyes closed and thinking only of the way Noctis looked when he showed him how he holds fire, light dancing in his Crystal blue eyes. He looked ethereal, like something in the pages of the history text Gladiolus loves so much. He looked calm, rushing with power, and Gladio wanted to be drawn into his flame.

A rush of warmth in his stomach. He nods.

Noctis presses his chest to Gladio’s back, he can practically feel his skin through their sweat dampened clothes. Noctis is burning. Gladio feels like he is burning too.

“Let go,” Noctis whispers.

His fingers are sure on Gladio’s wrist, his breath on his skin feeling a thousand degrees, and Gladio releases the tension in his body.

Noctis gasps and when Gladio opens his eyes he finds the flames in the torch swirling and flint of fire gathered around Gladio’s thick fingers. He does not jump, does not tense, just watches silent and still as the licks of fire dance up from his skin, grazing him without pain or discomfort. He breathes a pleasured sigh.

Noctis’ cheekbone rests on Gladio’s bicep. He can feel him breathing over his skin, washing down his arm to meet the flame. “Stop,” he whispers and Gladio clenches his hand, the fire immediately disappearing with a swift singe to his skin. Gladio brings his hand to his face, he can see the pink of the mild burn. It’s nothing serious. He looks down at Noctis, at the mop of choppy grey hair resting against him.

“That’s… wow.”

He can _feel_ Noctis’ smile against his skin and it makes his heart skip a beat.

“Where did it go?”

Noctis is silent for a few long moments, unmoving, still pressed against Gladio’s back keeping him warm where they touch. “In me.”

Gladio shudders, blood rushing in his ears with the heavy pulse of his knocking heart.

When Noctis unpeels their skin, Gladio can see that his eyes are red and wet, studying every part of Gladio but his face in pure awe.

“I can’t believe that worked.”

Gladio barks out a nervous laugh. “It was your idea.”

“And it worked.”

“It did.”

Missing his warmth after Noctis steps back, Gladio turns to face him, finds the boy with his hand on his chest.

“You okay, Noct?”

His nods slowly, in a daze, then steps back again. “I’m… that was a little…”

“Yeah,” Gladio agrees, because Noctis looks the same way he feels. He rubs a hand over his eye and finds his lashes just slightly damp.

Gladio drives him home. They don’t say much, but Noctis’ hand rests on the center console, just beside Gladio’s grip on the stick shift.

-

Magic starts to slip into their world, hidden from everyone else. The Grand Maester is pleased with his development, that the drawing of the elements is becoming natural to him. He preens when he tells Gladio of this, eyes glinting with the secret they hold between them.

“I asked him about the power of the Crystal amongst the Crownsguard.”

Gladio’s hands falter on the lacing of his sneakers. “I ain’t your Crownsguard yet.”

“But you will be. I asked him about how that magic is shared. He says it’s mysterious, that no Crownsguard has been able to wield the elements in a hundred years, that warping is all they have left and the distance is waning through the years.”

Gladio knows this, of course. He spent another sleepless night after he pulled the flames from the torch reading more texts, having driven straight to the library after dropping Noctis off that night, his car colder without the boy’s presence. He reads for hours, combed through for words on the Crystal’s history of choice, how it seems to be fickler as the years wane. No books gave him anything more than the knowledge that what he and Noctis can do is unheard of. He does not want to ask anyone what it means. Instead, he holds it close to him like the heat that built in him when he and Noctis shared the flame.

“Grand Maester said that the Crownsguard before the wall were able to hold a small amount of unbottled elemancy, but it wasn’t much.” Gladio looks up and finds Noctis idly bouncing his wooden sword in his hand.

“That’s right,” Gladio says, revealing to Noctis that he has done his reading. “It’s usually not much more than can they use to imbue their weapons, or to not injure themselves when the King or Queen would give them a bottle to throw in combat.”

“Grand Maester didn’t know of any Crownsguard that were able to call on and hold the elements.”

“Noct, be careful with this.”

Noctis shrugs, “I know, I know. It’s just, I’ve been thinking about it. A lot. I don’t know what it means. Aren’t there any books in your room that describe something like this?”

Gladio shakes his head. “Don’t look too deep into it.” Though _fuck_ he wants to know more.

Noctis pouts and walks to the center of the room, getting into fighting stance.

-

At the end of practice, Noctis grabs both of their water bottles and with a quiet, “Let me,” a white frosty air swirls around his hands and engulfs the bottles in a thin layer of ice.

He shyly hands a bottle to Gladio, who finds the water is frozen solid. He frowns.

“Sorry, sorry.”

Gladio just presses the ice against his hot forehead and smirks at Noctis. “Good job.”

-

It’s late, the sun already set and the training room plunged into near darkness, only one lamp overhead switched on and the remainder of the light coming from the torches.

“Are you sure?” Noctis asks quietly, looking up at Gladio.

“Yeah,” He says, surely though he knows better than to indulge this, at least in the secrecy that they have. Neither of them have talked to anyone else about the night the flames ran through Gladio and into Noctis. Gladio should, he really should, but he wants to know the warmth of the shared flame again, wants to know it wasn’t a fluke.

His father always told him it was dangerous to play with fire.

Gladio gets into position, his chest turned away but his hand outstretched toward the flame. Noctis comes up behind him again, hands snaking down Gladio’s arms, fingers tracing down his skin like the ink black wings that are still freshly healing. Gladio bites back a shiver. Noctis grips the outstretched wrist and presses the length of their arms together. Noctis’ cheek is against the center of his shoulder blade, flesh to flesh around Gladio’s ribbed tank top. He can feel him watching the flame.

It’s an intimate position. Gladio leans back into him, aligning them back to chest. Noctis feels so small against him.

“Ready?” Gladio asks, though he’s not sure which of them is trembling.

“Yeah,” Noctis breathes.

Gladio closes his eyes and focuses on the warmth of Noctis against him, on the dance of flames as they start to heat up his hand.

Never has Gladio felt more alone with Noctis than this moment, the two of them standing in the middle of the training room in near darkness, the orange light on their skin flickering and casting long dancing shadows over the dips and swells of their bodies. He never realized how the time they spent together training was their time, how the rest of the world stayed outside the door, kept at bay by a sign Gladio started hanging once Noctis became older enough to be interrupted by trivial palace matters, the door locked to prevent unnecessary disturbances. 

A large window near the ceiling reveals the dark purple of the sky, stars twinkling in the distance as the moon finds its rightful place. Down on Eos, flames wick off the candle and onto Gladio, dancing around his hand in the dim twilight, swirling up his arm and seeming to disappear into his chest. The Shield feels no burn, no pain, no sensation of holding the flame. Instead, Noctis gasps against his back, and Gladio knows without asking that the fire is filling the Prince. Noctis presses his face into his back, Gladio can feel the sigh as as much as he can hear it over the heavy drumbeat of his own heart. Noct doesn’t sound like he’s in pain. He sounds...

“S-stop,” Noctis whispers and Gladio clenches his fist to dampen the flame. They are left in the darkness, no light on the candles, no light on their skin, and Gladio can feel Noctis’ sweat through his shirt. 

“Noct?” He asks, peering over his shoulder, but the Prince does not look up at him right away. 

All he hears is heavy breathing. 

The stand in the dark, the room a heavy dark purple, just enough to see vague shapes like their sneakers by the door and the wooden swords carefully put away on the racks. But when Noctis finally lifts his face to Gladio’s, the moon glows on his skin and Gladio can see the lovely planes of his face, the dampness of his hair, the glassiness of his blue eyes, the parting of his bowed lips. 

And then, half-expected, Noctis leans up and presses his lips to the corner of Gladio’s mouth. 

Gladio does not hesitate. He turns to hold Noctis’ shoulders and kisses him in full. Warm and full of light, Noctis opens his mouth and Gladio chases his heat, mouthing at him as they kiss, his hands sliding up Noctis’ shoulders to cradle his neck and anchor himself to the ocean floor, deep diving into Noctis and not letting up until Noctis shoves at his chest. 

Gladio gasps, a lungful of cool air in the midst of their humidity.

“That was,” Noctis starts. He is staring at Gladio’s mouth. “I can feel you inside me. I can feel you everywhere.”

“Is that,” Gladio hesitates, “okay?”

Noctis nods slowly, but his eyes betray his eagerness. “Let’s do it again.”

-

“Tell me, when you discovered this…deviation.”

Gladio and Noctis sit side by side in front of the Grand Maester in his study. Ignis and Regis stand in the room, not crowding the Maester standing before them, observing like bystanders. The boys are silent, Gladio watching the fire on the table and Noctis staring down at his hands. It is clear that Noctis is not eager to speak.

“If you will, Your Highness.”

Gladio interjects instead. “Recently.”

“What made you decide to try the sharing of elemancy?”

Noctis is frozen still, picking at his cuticles below the table. It’s as though he is not present, and Gladio does what he has to do.

“I suggested it. Noctis was giving me regular updates on his training and I said I wanted to try. So we did. And it worked.”

The Grand Maester looks displeased, frowning and observing the two of them, Gladio’s boldness, the Prince’s submissive silence. Ignis watches them from the corner of the room. King Regis’ eyes trace the books on the shelves along the wall.

“Show us.”

Gladio feels exposed, he and Noctis in position and pressed skin to skin. The position is intimate. Noctis holds his wrists, but does not align their torsos as close as he usually does, he lifts his face from Gladio’s back. There are three sets of eyes on them, scrutinizing their every move, watching them studiously. Gladio holds his hand to the flame on the desk and despite the pressure of the eyes on them, despite the fear of repercussions, the fire comes to him. Lately, it heeds with limited effort. Every time they try this the magic flows easier to them, swirling around Gladio’s hand and disappearing into Noctis. The Maester gasps, Regis approaches to watch close, Ignis frowns.

Noctis’ forehead falls to Gladio’s back, he can feel his familiar breath through his shirt.

When Gladio puts his hand down the fire dissipates and Noctis, without instruction, lights up the wick.

“ _Enough!_ ” The Maester barks.

-

It isn’t like being caught kissing, but it feels like it is. 

-

Gladio closes the door behind them, plunging them into the darkness of Noctis’ bedroom.

Noctis sits up on his knees, mouths still pressed together, straddling Gladio’s thick thighs, and he reaches out, flames swirling down around his hand to his fingertips and transfigurating into proper flames on the wicks of the candles. The room glowing low enough to see the shapes of each other’s bodies, to find their skin in mysterious flicking shadows and shapes, to feel outside their regular bodies and their regular roles.

The new presence of Noctis’ own apartment outside the Citadel brought on a quick change between them. They could be alone. They could cultivate the magic that grows steadily between them. 

Noctis presses his palm to Gladio’s skin when he is finished with the candles, and the heat of his palm seeps through Gladio, makes his whole body burn. He thrusts up into Noctis, seeking the warmth of him.

They roll in the bed, taking each other apart while the room glows with their warmth.

-

“It is a shame,” Ignis had told him on the last night before Gladio left, not bothering to turn and face him, “That the Crystal took your magic with it in this time of darkness. We could have used your source of power to keep the demons at bay.”

Gladio walked away from Ignis and Prompto’s cabin the next day. He wished he could have lit the stove for Ignis’ cooking, or the fireplace for their warmth. He wished he could have lit thunder above the cabin to keep them in the light. He wish he could have cared for his companions in a world without their King, but he was rendered inadequate the moment Noctis disappeared and the world plunged into unforgiving darkness.

Gladio spends years wandering the blackness, popping in and out of Lestallum to visit his sister and her hunter friends. He assists them on hunts and sleeps on their flootheyhey spend their hard-earned hunting money on booze. It reminds him of his old life, one that now seems a million miles away, and he resents them for their ability to have fun in eternal turmoil. 

The first year is hard. The second year is harder. He chooses to forget that the third year happened at all. 

By the ninth year, Gladio is a hardened husk in the shape of a man. He visits Prompto and Ignis for a night every few months, a sporadic pattern than Ignis seems to predict regardless. Whenever Gladio appears on their doorstep, he finds a warm home within the rickety cabin walls and three plates of food. Maybe Ignis always cooks for him; the possibility fills him with shame.

The shame makes him try harder while he is there. He and Prompto patch the walls and the roof, and Gladio cuts down tree trunks to make barriers and furniture he can leave Prompto to whittle. He brings them logs for a fire and carries the groceries from Lestallum.

They have their own subtle ways to ask him to stay a few more nights. He never does. Ignis and Prompto can rebuild, but Gladio never will. Not without Noct. The fire burned out when Noctis disappeared and the hope that he will one day bring fire back to Eos is a paper lantern on a stormy night. Gladio doesn’t hope. He just exists.

Prompto and Ignis have long since climbed the stairs to bed, and Gladio has been alone in the cold dark of the sitting room on the ragged couch Prompto mends when a new hole appears. An unused fireplace sits dusty and dark. Gladio stares at it, traces the shapes of the stones in the pit. The darkness seems tangible, an oppressive thing that burns his eyes. Experimentally, Gladio holds out a scarred and callused hand.

There is no flicker.

He waits.

-

Gladio is alone at the end of the bar in Hammerhead, slowly swirling his third scotch of the long night. The hunt today was a hard win, but he made enough gil to travel west. Maybe he’ll find a boater who will take him to Altissia, carve out a new life in a new city. He hears that the lights in Altissia make the city a lively place where deep in the heart of city life, no daemons dare crawl from the earth. Maybe he’ll stop by the cabin outside Lestallum and leave them a goodbye to remember him by.

“Radio just came in from Hester–” Gladio flinches at the name “–says he’s got the dead king. He’s ten minutes out.”

A fear washes over him, a cold wave from his greying hair to his tired, swollen feet in his thick boots. There have been rumors before, words of Lucian royalty who have long fallen returning amongst the living. They always turned out to be rumors and lies, tales to keep people’s minds engaged in a time of numbing fear.

Gladio has hoped before.

He looks to the lantern on the bar, a little oil flame flickering as it holds light for Takka to see the labels on the bottles along the top shelf.

With slow reluctance, Gladio raises a hand toward the fire. He closes his eyes. He imagines the way Noctis looked in the moonlight in the their training room, hot with flame and eyes wet with wonder. He remembers what it felt like to be alone with his Prince, to let themselves be overwhelmed by Noctis’ elemancy, his Crystal-given ability to run the elements between their bodies, something no one can explain.

Gladio opens his eyes when he feels the fire wrap around his hand and disappear through him, a hot light moving into someone else, somewhere else, the same someone it has always been, will always be. He stands.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, happy GladNoct week 2017!


End file.
